1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is directed to computer systems. More particularly, it is directed to the protection of electronic content within a computing environment.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a general sense, conditional access systems require certain criteria to be met before access to protected content is granted. For example, cable television providers employing conditional access may encrypt television channels such that unencrypted versions of such channels can only be viewed by individuals that have acquired an appropriate subscription. In this example, a television set top box issued to a subscriber may include a decryption module for decrypting content from the provider. In an example including conventional analog systems, this process was historically performed by scrambling television channels; a television set top box capable of descrambling such channels was required to view the channels.
In early conditional access systems, communication between the content provider and the subscriber was unidirectional. For instance, a content channel could be provided as unidirectional downstream content sent from the provider's system to the subscriber device (e.g., a set top box). Within such a framework, the content provider could push non-content information (e.g., decryption keys for channel decryption) in-band over the unidirectional channel to the subscriber.